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JibberJobber is a powerful tool that lets you manage your career, from job search to relationship management to target company management (and much more). Free for life, or upgrade for a year for only $60 (includes the Video Library!)

The premium level of JibberJobber ($60/year) includes access to the JibberJobber Video Library, which has many courses that help you with your career management.

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File this in the better late than never category…. we now give you the ability to make a phone number and email address preferred.

On the Contacts Detail Page (the page where you see your Contact record), double-click the phone field that you want to be preferred… that will open that field for editing. Note the new checkbox to make that phone number preferred.

Once you have designated something as preferred, it will have a light gray box around it on the Detail Page, like this:

Do the very same thing to make an email address preferred. This works on Company records also.

Want to see the Preferred Email and Preferred Phone on your List Panels? Easy! Just click the Manage Columns icon, to the left of the search box, and then look for Preferred Phone and Preferred Email columns… check the checkboxes to show them, save your preferences, and now you can see those columns in your List Panel.

There are a few more enhancements for the preferred fields… but this is a great start

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Many years ago I came into contact with Sree Sreenivasan. Back then Sree was a professor at Columbia (and a dean there, as well as the Chief Digital Officer), and a tech reporter for WNBC, where he actually featured JibberJobber twice, in NYC. About three years ago he announced he was leaving Columbia to be the Chief Digital Officer of The Met (aka, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC)… what he said was his dream job.

Last month Sree announced that he was leaving The Met. I saw this two minute video of him, talking about what he did. I hope the video embeds well.. if not, go here and watch it. My commentary below this video (scroll down).

I have to say, I was surprised to see that Sree is moving on from The Met. Sree has always seemed to have the perfect career… he had a lot of power and authority, influence and impact, opportunity, and he was in an extraordinary position to meet lots of new people and have real, deep relationships. To jump from over 20 years at Columbia to a new employer was a leap of faith… and here we are, three years later, moving on.

Let’s dig into his video… first I’ll comment on some of his important points, and then I’ll end with an observation that he didn’t talk about:

“I was angry for a little bit” I too was angry (for a long time). He said he had to channel his anger… as did I. I know you will feel a lot of emotions, even anger at whoever did this to you (and maybe at yourself). Channel that energy into something useful, and don’t nurture resentment and bitterness.

“I put it on Facebook” Seems kind of obvious but too many people don’t do this simple thing: REACH OUT. Maybe not on Facebook, but to your network. Reach out and let people know that you need help, and that you will accept help, and how they can help you. Don’t do the job search thing alone!

“I made a google form” (asking what he should do) This was brilliant… it served a few purposes: (1) it made people think about Sree and what his next move could be, which surely would (2) make them think about how they could help him achieve that (hopefully with introductions and leads). It also (3) invited people to share positive thoughts and ideas with Sree. As you know, at any point in a job search it’s easy to get into a pity party and think negatively about yourself. I found that after weeks of rejection and non-response, I started to actually believe that I had nothing to offer, and my prospects for the future were getting darker by the day.

“This could happen to you” This has been my message for over ten years. I don’t care how happy you are, how much of a producer you are, how great your company is… so many variables are at play here, that you have no control over, that no one is safe. Feel safe? You better STILL be preparing for a change in career.

“What is your Plan B, C, D” Quick… if you had to change jobs right now, what is it to? What is your Plan B? Let’s go a little further and think about your Plan C and D and maybe even more. You might be insanely loyal, but you are only doing yourself a disservice if you don’t have a Plan B (and C and D, etc.) AND aren’t preparing for those plans. I had no Plan B, and learned that making it up on the fly was hard and painful.

“Save money” I know that most of us are living paycheck to paycheck, but we need to save for a rainy day. I had $1,000 in savings by the time I got laid off, and within one week spent it all on car repairs. Whoops!

“What are you offering the world today?” You need to think bigger than “I do a good job, and my boss knows it.” What are you doing today that would make other companies and hiring managers say “wow, we want that!”

“People want to help you… “ When I was speaking in SoCal a few years back and made this point, a lady on the front row said “no one wants to help me, least of all my family.” It was really sad to hear her talk about how she had zero support. I would argue that in most cases, we all have people who want to help us… even if we don’t think so. Our family, friends, neigbors, colleagues, etc. don’t want to see us suffer like this. Here’s a big eye-opener, though: the people you might be sure will help you might not be able to… too busy, not know how, or not realize that you look to them for that much help. But please, believe that people want to help you.

“You have to be willing to accept the help” which is “very difficult” to do Yes, very, very difficult to do. We are generally good at giving help, and just unaccustomed to receiving help. It takes heaps of humility to accept help graciously. Get good at this.

What does Sree not talk about? He doesn’t talk about how he has spent years being nice, working on great things, and nurturing real relationships. His Twitter account has over 7o,000 followers (granted, not all of those are real people) because he is a giver, and a networker. Sree has a contagiously charming personality, and people like him. He has helped many people, and when you meet him in person you instantly like him.

I know that has a lot to do with the results he had with his Google form… he had a network, with real relationships, and actually tapped into that network. You could too. I’m not saying you can’t be an introvert, but I am convinced that we all need to get much better at real relationships with people: family, friends, colleagues, etc.

Today, I want to wrap this up. Of course, these five posts aren’t the only five parts of our vision… there are more, some pretty obvious, and some behind-the-scenes. Let’s talk about a culmination of our vision, and our promise to you.

We want to empower you. In your career, in your relationships, and in your job search. The job search isn’t necessarily the main thing we want to empower you in… it is a short-term, temporary situation. It will likely end in a few months… and it is something that will likely reoccur in a few years.

We take a more long-term perspective and want to empower you, starting today, through the rest of your career (and in some cases, even beyond).

Ready to network? JibberJobber is ready to organize, track, and manage where you are at in your relationships.

Feeling lost and out of control? JibberJobber can help empower you, and feel more in control.

Ready to conquer the world, and be the most amazing person you can be? JibberJobber will be a tool in your toolbox of awesomeness to help you stay on top of your goals, and the tactics to achieve those goals.

A user once said “JibberJobber is my virtual assistant.” I loved that because the role of a virtual assistant is to do some of the tedious part of your job so you can focus on the stuff that only you can do. Instead of spending time on tedious (which still should be done), you can focus on higher value tasks.

Working on the right things, at the right time, and not having to worry about organizational or management things, will help you feel empowered.

Working towards your goals will ensure you are moving in the right direction, and not wasting time with trivial, no-impact tasks (aka, busy work).

I’m not saying that JibberJobber will be THE tool to ensure you don’t waste time, but it is a tool to help you be and feel empowered as a job seeker, and more importantly, as someone who owns the direction of their career.

Providing tools to help level the playing field, manage and organize,follow-up and nurture, and empower you, is our commitment to you.

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Follow-up, and nurture relationships. These are two things that every career professional says you must do. It’s easy to do this in the first week of your job search. But once you have a good 50 people you’ve been networking with (note, I didn’t say 50 people in your network…. there is a big difference!), and more informational interviews scheduled, you have enough follow-up obligations to make your head spin.

So, you stop following-up. You wonder if you should (a) contact a new person and have the first conversation with them, or (b) follow-up with the 50 people you’ve talked with in the last month.

This is a real quandary for job seekers. One is to add another person to the list of people you “should” follow-up with, and the other is to open that box and reach out to dozens and dozens and dozens of people… what do you say? What did you say last time? How long has it been since the last communication? Where you supposed to do something and report back to them? Are you going to mistakenly repeat the same message you sent them last month, because you forget you had talked to them?

Those are questions that might cause you to not follow-up… because you feel ill-prepared. But neglecting follow-up is a poor habit to create in your job search. You need people to help you, and you need to have multiple touch-points with them so they can (a) trust you, and (b) understand who you are and what your brand (or value proposition) is.

There are various follow-up tools in JibberJobber. As I mentioned this week, JibberJobber is more than a repository where you collect and record data… it’s a tool to help you make use of that data, and move towards your goals. Following-up with people is a big part of that.

This has been a part of our vision from the very beginning… and as we’ve grown to understand the needs of a job seeker, networker, and career manager, we’ve figured out more ways to make JibberJobber more of a foll0w-up tool for YOU.

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Yesterday we talked about organizing your job search. It had to do with taking all the data you collect in a job search and networking, and putting it somewhere and being able to access it later.

Today I want to talk about managing your job search. This is different than organizing data and information. Managing your job search has to do with knowing what you should do, when you should do it, and even measuring whether you are doing it or not.

When you feel out of control, you don’t know what to do. You feel behind, and like you are forgetting something. Indeed, you will forget things. I remember missing some important meetings because my tracking system (a spreadsheet that was growing overwhelmingly complex) was just not helping me who to call, and when to call them.

Organizing is about the data. Managing is about your activities and relationships (specifically, nurturing relationships).

I remember I wanted my spreadsheet to tell me what I had going on today, and what I needed to do. In addition to who I said I would call, I wanted to know who I hadn’t called for a while, and it was time to reach out to them again.

Later, a user told me “JibberJobber is my follow-up tool.” This was music to my ears… I want JibberJobber to be that tool to help you foll0w-up and nuture relationships. When he told me that, we made some changes and made JibberJobber more of a follow-up tool (which, as you now know, made it more of a management tool).

A management tool for job seekers. What a novel idea. Instead of just using your memory, some post-it notes, and a spreadsheet, you now had a tool that could say “make sure you call So-and-so today.”

Job seekers I knew back in 2006, during my job search, including myself, really needed a management tool. Otherwise, it seemed like we were spinning our wheels and missing opportunities.

Again, organizing is about the data, managing is about activities and relationships. This has been a core value proposition of JibberJobber from day one.

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I talk about organizing (and managing) your job search quite a bit… what does that mean?

In my job search I went to a weekly networking job club. The people over the club thought it would be helpful to bring the spouses in for a meeting (and a dinner) so they could come up to speed on the tactics and strategies that we were being taught. We were being told to do stuff outside of “sit on Monster and apply to jobs 10 hours a day.” Some spouses (who hadn’t been in a job search for many years) didn’t understand why we were having lunch meetings, breakfast meetings, informational interviews, networking meetings, etc. Isn’t a job search made up of stalking the job boards and applying to jobs?

So, we had a really nice dinner, and some presentations to help the spouses understand the what and why of today’s job search. I remember one of the presenters was talking about the networking he was doing, and one of the spouses raised her hand and said “this sounds like a lot of information… how do you keep track of all of that?”

Indeed, if you are doing a strategic, purposeful, principle-based job search, you should be gathering a lot of data. Names, numbers, companies, opportunities… You are also creating a lot of information, when you apply to an opening with a certain version of your resume, or you have conversations with someone and you learn some great information… how and where do you track that?

The amount of data that you come across, and create, in a job search, is easily overwhelming. The more your search, the more you can forget. A spreadsheet doesn’t really have the space or structure to store the information, nor does it have the right tools to make it easy to find important information later.

There’s a considerable difference between the power of a flat file, or a spreadsheet, and a database-driven application. JibberJobber is the database-driven application that allows you to enter data in logical places (like Log Entries, or Company records) and easily search for conversations or contacts.

Yesterday I mentioned that recruiters and HR have access to tools like this… and JibberJobber levels the playing field. Today my emphasis is on organizing the vast amount of data and information that comes your way. This was a considerable part of the early vision of JibberJobber, and has been a core promise that we have stuck true to through the years.

The vision behind JibberJobber, from 10+ years ago, is multi-faceted. I was in my own failing job search, needing help organizing my networking and applications. I was also ready for something entrepreneurial, and had been thinking about various business ideas. JibberJobber was one of three that I came up with. In this post, I want to share one aspect of the vision behind JibberJobber.

One of the key reasons I created JibberJobber was to “level the playing field.” What does that mean?

Recruiters and HR people involved in hiring have tools, such as “applicant tracking systems,” that help them organize and manage the hiring process. They talk with, and should know where they are at, with dozens, sometimes hundreds, of candidates. The expensive software they use helps them keep on top of who they talk with, and where they are at with each person.

In contrast, job seekers had… well, a scrappy spreadsheet or spiral notebook that they threw together, and spent time patching up.

This seemed unfair to me: the employed people had all the right tools (debatable, considering I rarely talk to a recruiter who is happy with their ATS) and job seekers had only what they could come up with.

I created JibberJobber so that you, the job seeker, could have a toolset that (a) did the job (helped you organize and track) and (b) helped you feel empowered, and to a degree, feel like the tools you have at your fingertips somehow help level the playing field.

That was one of the purposes behind JibberJobber: to empower you, and level the playing field.

One day, I had a conversation with Dave, one of the recruiters I thought was really going to help me land my dream job. Check out the one line he gave me that changed how I networked with recruiters in this blog post: Recruiters ARE NOT your BFF in the Job Search.

When he told me that, he clarified our relationship, and our roles. I stopped wasting time chasing recruiters who were busy doing their jobs, and had no reason to reply to me, nor to give me any feedback. I stopped reaching out only to get more rejection.

This feedback changed a lot about my job search. When you get honest feedback from a recruiter, will it change your job search? Will you be ready to take it, or will you reject it? I’m not saying you need to take or believe every bit of feedback you get, but you have to be open to (a) accepting that it is truth, and (b) figure out how to incorporate it so you can move forward in the right direction.

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I did. About 30 of them. It was an exercise in ME reaching out to THEM and rarely hearing anything back from them.

I didn’t understand the relationship between recruiters and job seekers, nor did I understand the role recruiters play. What is a job seeker to them? What are their goals? Understanding those things helped me realize why no one was calling me back.

Here’s my answer to why recruiters don’t call you back: because you are not a likely candidate to fill a role they have been hired to fill.

It’s that simple.

I thought recruiters were “power networkers” (which is phrase from Keith Ferrazzi’s Never Eat Alone book). Some might be, but many I’ve talked to are not good networkers at all.

I thought recruiters loved to, and were good at, helping people get hired. Not really… that’s not necessarily their job. Their job is to fill a role… not help someone (anyone) get hired. I’ve come to learn that that expectation is as absurd as expecting the butcher at my grocery store to come to my house and cook the meat I bought. It’s just completely, totally outside of what they get paid to do, and even what they are trained to do.

When I realized that recruiters didn’t call back because they didn’t have a role that was perfect for me, and they never would call back unless I was going to help them fill a role, I moved on. I stopped forcing networking with these supposedly great networking contacts, and networked with other people.

Doing this was mentally liberating. My expectations and hopes, with regard to relationships with recruiters, was more realistic. And I spent time where I needed to.

How about you – are you ready to move on from “networking” with recruiters?

JibberJobber is a powerful tool that lets you manage your career, from job search to relationship management to target company management (and much more). Free for life, or upgrade for a year for only $60 (includes the Video Library!)

The premium level of JibberJobber ($60/year) includes access to the JibberJobber Video Library, which has many courses that help you with your career management.